When you’re from Germany you’re

By Joerg Colberg
Jul 11, 2002

When you’re from Germany you’re not supposed to know funny stories about animals. Kangaroos, eagles, bears, elephants, and all those exciting animals don’t live in Germany. So people usually don’t believe me when I tell them that in Germany, hedgehogs (yes, that’s hedgehogs) are responsible for the kind of story which always causes immense interest. Those stories are all based on the fact that hedgehogs produce sounds which are fairly similar to human sounds. I remember when I lived in Munich I once went home after work, in a cold Winter night, and I heard somebody coughing really bad. I looked around but I couldn’t find anybody. Eventually, I found a little coughing hedgehog. He ran away when he saw me. Coughing, of course, is not as interesting to my American friends as sex. And that’s where the hedgehogs enter. Like most animals, hedgehogs have a delicate procedure for mating. As usual, the male has to do an elaborate set of tricks to get laid. Hedgehogs don’t have to buy drinks at a discotheque but the actual affair is pretty noisy nevertheless. The BBC reported today about what happened in Maintal. Luckily for the prudish Brits, those hedgehogs were not already enganged in “the act”. Sometimes, people call the police because there is noisy lovemaking going on and then the police finds copulating hedgehogs.